Kanye West’s DONDA Is Real, and It’s Going to Cannes

Here’s why we need to always trust Kanye, forever. Back in January, awake and energetic and feeling chatty one cold winter’s evening, Mr. West got on Twitter and rattled off a vision for a bold new venture called DONDA. The nuts and bolts was that Kanye was putting together a multidisciplinary design firm, named after his late mother, that “will galvanize amazing thinkers and put them in a creative space to bounce there dreams and ideas… To dream of, create, advertise and produce products driven equally by emotional want and utilitarian need.. To marry our wants and needs.” And oh how we laughed and laughed. Well, guess what, jerks — the joke’s on us.

Via a press release, Kanye has announced a new project: “On Wednesday 23 May 2012, Kanye West and his creative firm DONDA will bring his new cinematic experience CRUEL SUMMER to the world famous Palm Beach in Cannes. Inspired by the new G.O.O.D. Music album of the same name, CRUEL SUMMER is a fusion of short film and art installation; an immersive “7 Screen Experience” for the eyes and ears unlike anything West has attempted before.” What’s that, you say? A 7 Screen Experience? Kind of like the one he Tweeted about back in January?

Well, well, well. Guess we can now expect the rest of DONDA’s 22 departments’ worth of futuristic innovations and strategic deployments — the Spike Jonze iPhone Summer School; the think tank of social network experts and nutritionists and architects — to come to fruition, just as soon as ‘Ye gets around to them. Also great is that Kanye is using this revolutionary new technology to plug something pleasurably old school and so unhip, pop-culture-reference wise: the G.O.O.D. Music posse album he’s putting out (the one the heaters “Mercy,” “I Don’t Like” and “Therafulu”“Way Too Cold” “Cold” came from) that he has, intentionally or otherwise, named after a Bananarama song. Coming soon to the beaches of the French Riviera … presented in “immersive seven screen experience” … it’s Big Sean rapping about butts!

You can RSVP for it here. You should RSVP. I RSVP’d. Short of a return-to-Pangea situation, there is no way I’m going to be in France next Wednesday. But I RSVP’d, just in case. Because this is really happening. DONDA is real. It’s all … it’s all real.

And ‘Ye? One humble suggestion? If you and Kim are still going to be a thing, maybe you could hijack Keeping Up With the Kardashians? Turn it into DONDA’s own private Pravda?